Another time: out of place with this one.

*

He needed to go about the duty of communicating with Miss Money-Root.

And Lomita’s thoughts for the day needed to go through the process of being centered on making sure he was sufficiently relaxed and medicated with the diazepam. He was still sweating. Their life now had a mutual intention, to get him on his way back to recovery – his fitness. There on a chair in the corner of the bedroom were his neatly folded and ironed clothes; placed with purpose by Manita. Top of the pile – his cell phone.

The horror that struck him halfway through constructing the email to Miss Money-Root was that he had made love to Lomita.

Unprotected.

And he did not know the status of his condition. That, in addition to everything else, was something he couldn’t even contemplate coping with, so made no attempt.

He had had an epileptic fit. It was slowly dawning; he had commited those to history, to his childhood.

But his main concern was the exposure of this condition to two innocent people. His embarrassment at incrementally revealing who he really was.

He called to make an appointment with his doctor, Dr Aran Anand.

An American Sikh doctor, whose entire staff were dressed in white, himself included; they wore white turbans and were all part of an ashram. Any offspring they had were all sent back to India to be educated at a boarding school there, so they rarely saw their children. But they were dedicated to the cause of helping the community of Los Angeles, at least the wealthy part of that community, in a place they considered had the best and the worst the world could offer. A fair description, Ever had always thought, of the city.

Heaven and hell.

He carried so much guilt that it was difficult for him to stave off the anxiety it produced; he was in a turmoil as to whether he should tell Dr Aran the whole story of his anxiety and depression, which had never been treated by him, or just deal with the STI scenario.

Anyway he booked an appointment for tomorrow morning at eleven. They were always so pleased to see him, he was always fitted in. He had, after all, been a patient since he was a child.

The two things that dominated his thoughts at the moment, that were at the forefront of that grey smudge of his, were to get his gun and buy a car.

He had decided to conceal the real reasons for both these actions from Lomita. Because, from his perspective, both appeared to have an understandable logic as to why he should carry them out.